You remind me of me

When it comes to recruitment there is the temptation to only employ someone in your own image. Someone that thinks the same way you do, shares the same values, deals with problems in the same way and so on. For some this is just more comfortable than employing someone different and being exposed to the unpredictable outcome. After all, one person’s synergy of ideas is another person’s clash of opposites.

A proper control freak can take this one step further and not only employ people in their own image but also at an earlier point in their development – “You remind me of me when I was a …”.

That makes is so much easier to shape and control their staff. It also maintains the feelings of superiority and lack of perceived competition that some managers need, to feel secure.

If you hadn’t guessed it already, I think this is plain wrong and a sign of real insecurity. In the same way that we need bio-diversity to protect our environment, we also need idea-diversity, value-diversity, approach-diversity and so on. It might be more of a handful but it is more productive, more rewarding and most of all, more human.